by Amy Lane
“I just… you go to school, right, Chance?”
Chase nodded. “Yeah. Sac State. Not too far from where you live… I forget which street… like, take one of the fifties across town, I think—hell, I think you can bike.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a little town—you don’t get all bent out of shape about that, do you?”
Chase shook his head. It was what it was. He’d grown up there.
“Yeah. Anyway, I just… I like this right now. I just want to have something later. I mean, I’ve got the money, ’cause I just send some to Mom and then the rest—I’ve got my little house, and I live kind of simple. John gives us kick-ass health insurance, otherwise, it would be like, you know, my biggest expense next to my frickin’ car, but….”
“You want to plan for afterward?” Chase offered, and Tango’s smile, the kind with the long canine teeth that looked like they could maybe have used dental work but he probably couldn’t afford it when he was a kid, was brilliant.
“Yeah. Man, I want to do something with animals, right? I mean, you know. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a veterinarian, but all that fucking post-graduate work, right? So I don’t know. Maybe run a shelter… shit. Something. But first I’ve got to… you know.”
“Get a degree. Take a class. Do the grown-up thing?”
“Yeah. You know. You’ve got a girlfriend, a plan. You’re a grown-up.”
I’m faking it, Tango. Guys can’t fake orgasms but they sure as shit can fake adulthood.
“You can do it, you know,” Chase said sincerely. “I mean, it would be fun. My friend Don….” Shit.
“Don?”
Chase swallowed. “Donnie. My friend Donnie goes to Sac State. We don’t have any of the same classes or anything, but we meet sometimes for lunch. Anyway, we could show you around, right?”
“Yeah,” Tango said, looking excited but still sleepy. “Yeah. It would be good to have some friends there. Maybe I’ll get my shit together and see if I can enroll for spring semester, or even next fall.”
“That would be great!” Chase felt a sudden animation and affection for school that he hadn’t really had since Mercy had dropped out. “I’d love to introduce you to the guys and to….” To Mercy? Really?
“The guys, yes,” Tango said dryly, and Chase felt like he blushed from his toes to his nose.
“Yeah, just remember, if you meet Donnie and Kevin, they can know we work together, they just can’t know—”
“Anything else.” Tango rolled his eyes. “Dude, like I haven’t seen a closet before.”
Chase laughed, and they started telling stories about the best lies they could come up with in public that would explain the money and the friends, but Chase fell asleep in mid-sentence, so he couldn’t remember any of the good ones. Shortly after that, Tango shoved his shoulder under Chase’s arms and hefted him up.
“C’mon, big guy. Let’s go upstairs. We’ve got perfectly good rooms, and they’ll let us sleep in, okay?”
“Yeah,” Chase grumbled, and allowed himself to be led, clutching his big fluffy blanket, as they made their way through the house to the bedrooms the guys slept in.
“I’m down the hall,” Chase muttered, “in a twin bed. I think someone’s got the other twin in the room.”
“No worries,” Tango whispered. It was dark and silent in the house—neither of them wanted to wake the other guys. “Me ’n’ Scott were sharing a king—I’m pretty sure he’ll be in Dex’s room tonight.”
Some of the rooms they slept in had doubled as sets that day. Chase had a wayward thought about that, about rooms soaked in sex, about come drenching sheets and how many times the sheets had been laundered and if the house would ever really forget. He was too tired to give voice to it, though. He just looked at Tango’s wicked eyes, sober in the light-less house, and thought that, for the first time, he really wanted to give a good night kiss to someone, sincerely, and not for show, and he couldn’t.
“I should give you something,” he said, and Tango, who had been about to pull away and trot down the hall, his blanket clutched around his shoulders, stopped.
“Like what?” he asked skeptically. It was clear he thought Chase was just tired, but Chase shook his head. It should mean something. This conversation had meant something, and he wanted to give a thing with meaning. He smiled slightly then, and leaned forward, making sure his lips touched Tango’s ear.
“My name,” he murmured, “is Chase Summers.” He pulled back, dreamy, pleased with himself, and totally unprepared for the stricken look on Tango’s face. Oh no. Oh Jesus. He’d fucked it all up. The night had been magic. Sweet and real and full of so much that was important. He hadn’t had a night like this since… since going camping with Donnie’s family the summer before their senior year. God, it was the first time he’d had a conversation with someone where saying Donnie’s name didn’t feel like swallowing a condensed syrup of everything he regretted about his short life, and he’d fucked it up he’d….
Tango’s hand on the back of his neck was strong and insistent, even though Tango was a couple of inches shorter. Chase’s head was pressured, manipulated, and pulled forward, until he was so close to Tango’s face that their breath mingled, and then Tango whispered, “Close your eyes.”
Chase closed his eyes, and Tango’s lips… so sweet. Softer than they looked. His kiss was just a whisper of tender skin on tender skin, and his tongue, sweeping lightly between Chase’s lips, was simply hot and wet. Chase whimpered and opened his mouth, and Tango pressed forward, and for a moment, the world exploded and left Tango, his mouth hard on Chase, the kiss plunging, receding, plunging, receding, until Chase was leaning back against the hallway wall, panting, making little, helpless sounds of need.
Tango pulled away first, and whispered a kiss across the corner of Chase’s mouth, down his cheek, until his lips were touching Chase’s ear.
“Tommy,” he whispered. “Tommy Halloran.” And then he stood back, turned Chase around, and gave him a gentle shove toward the door at the end of the hall.
Chase barely remembered getting to bed and falling in. The only thing he remembered when the sun finally woke him up, streaming thick and merciless through the slats of the white-painted blinds, was the most important thing.
Tommy Halloran kissed me goodnight.
Tidings of Comfort
THE shorter blond boy was leaning backward, crab-style, impaled on the taller blond boy’s cock, pistoning his hips up and down, his face contorted in ecstasy. With a groan, he wrapped his free hand around his own cock and started stroking, when the guy behind him said, “Dude! Want to see you do that!”
The shorter boy scrambled down, lying on his back, spreading his legs and raising his ass, and the guy behind him hurried up and positioned himself at that apex.
“Auughhh!” the smaller boy hissed happily as he was entered and invaded. “Yeah. You like it face to face?”
“Just like to know who I’m fucking, that’s all.”
MERCY was hell-bent on his dad coming over for Christmas Eve dinner. Her family was traveling to New Mexico to visit her grandparents this year, and Donnie’s family had invited them to Christmas dinner proper, so Mercy was sort of excited about the idea, and none of Chase’s half-strangled warnings did anything to dissuade her.
“It’ll be nice, you know? He doesn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with. Maybe it’ll be, you know, like a family, right?”
Chase had looked at her helplessly as she looked up the phone number. “Babe, if that man ends up being anything but a two-hundred-pound deadweight around our neck, it’s going to be because you’re a really, really good person and for no other frickin’ reason in the world.”
Mercy had laughed, and raised her delicate oval of a face up for the kiss that he should give her with a compliment like that, and Chase had obliged.
I don’t deserve you, Mercy Nuno.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said when they came up for air, and she laughed.
&nb
sp; “Yeah, just make sure you get me a really good present, okay?”
He already had. He’d gotten her the boots she’d been hinting at for months, and a pair of jeans that the sales girl said went with them, and a zip-up jacket with a faux-fur lining that went with the jeans. The sales girl at Mercy’s favorite store said she’d love it, and Chase looked at the giant packages he had to wrap and wondered why they didn’t seem to be enough to make up for the way he’d earned the money to buy them.
It was partly that which motivated him to let her work on his dad.
The other thing was… well, the whole rest of the week in Florida.
Tango (Tommy, he’s Tommy now, and no one can take that away!) had put off his plane ticket until Chase was ready to go back, and they’d been inseparable for pretty much the rest of the week. Chase watched people pair up, split up, pair up again. He watched guys hit Dex up to be on Raw Johnnies, the branch of Johnnies where the models got raw and dirty, no condoms allowed, no sweet-talk required. Dex had told him about Raw, and said that the guys—including Chase—all got tested every three months, but there was still risk in everything, so to think about it carefully. Chase and Tango had quietly agreed that it wasn’t worth the risk, but for a moment, Chase had thought about someone’s raw semen, dripping from his intimate spaces, and the thought had….
Turned him on.
But then he thought about who would be leaving his mark in Chase’s body, and the answer was simple, obvious, and unattainable.
Of course. It only turned him on because he thought Tango would do it.
Much of their time had been spent talking—and Chase was surprised to find that the magic of that first night didn’t fade with the dawn. They could still talk, about anything or nothing, at any given moment. It was such a wonder to find someone besides Donnie and Kevin who would sit and talk to him while they were playing cribbage or backgammon or video games and not get tired of it; someone who would lapse into the easy code of shared experiences without being self-conscious, or afraid the other guy would think he was odd because he could stare at a guy’s ass or pecs or crotch the same way other guys started at a girl’s chest.
Every minute he spent with Tango felt like a fucking miracle.
Even the minutes he said the shit he really hadn’t planned on telling anyone, not in his whole goddamned life.
“No, seriously. You can’t just drop a personal bomb on somebody like that and not expect them to check out the blast specs, Chase. What did you mean when you said that about your dad?”
Chase. Tommy Halloran had called him Chase. A Google-bomb of pictures flashed behind Chase’s eyes: low-rent apartments, his dad, drunk and asleep, the ever-present cigarette burning in the full ashtray. The back of his hand, connecting with Chase’s jaw when Chase was too small to know to run away. Long, drunken rants about how that bitch had left him with a worthless kid, and how the little fucker had better not be a faggot or Victor would fucking kill him.
“He’s….” Chase trailed off and swallowed. They were at a tiny little sushi restaurant, on their last night in Orlando. Dex had lent Chase the SUV; both of them had put on their nicest shirt and a real pair of jeans. After spending a week living in swim trunks and flip-flops, just putting on tennis shoes felt like wearing a tux. And the button-down shirt was suddenly wrapping around his throat with merciless, nicotine-stained fingers, strangling his voice in his chest.
Tommy’s hand, bony and awkward, was suddenly covering his.
“Never mind. Forget I asked.”
Chase looked up into those wicked brown eyes.
“I used to dream of killing him,” he said, the passionless tone of his voice almost frightening. “And now Mercy wants to stage a big reconciliation. I don’t have the words to tell her that… that… you know. My mom… she cried for years. Years. And he….” Jesus, Marnie, you dumb bitch, you can’t even keep the little snotbag from climbing on the fucking couch? Stop crying! You think there’s anyone out there who’s going to take you in? God, just get the hell out of my way. “He just wasn’t… isn’t….”
Tommy’s hand tightened on his. “Yeah. It’s okay, right?”
Chase nodded, his jaw so tight his ears hurt. “Yeah. No worries.”
“I’ll worry about you if I want.”
That snapped Chase out of it. “Don’t worry about me, Sunshine. I’m all golden.”
“Yeah, especially now that you finally mastered sunbathing in the nude!” Tommy grinned wickedly, and Chase blushed.
“As long as it’s in little, tiny increments,” Chase said sincerely. Like ten minutes at a time.
“So, how you gonna hide that from your girl?”
Chase shrugged. “We never turn the lights on. And if she notices, I’ll tell her I hit a tanning booth.”
Tommy nodded. “I’m visiting my mom over Christmas. I’ll have to remember the tanning booth thing. That’s a good one.”
Chase’s ran a playful finger down the skin of Tommy’s forearm. “It’s sort of hard to sell when you’re all pink and freckled,” he said, and Tommy shuddered.
“Dude,” he whispered, “not here.” Gingerly, he’d reached down and adjusted himself, and Chase’s eyes grew really wide.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice reverent.
Tommy’s gaze smacked into Chase’s like a head against cement. “Yeah,” he said, his voice troubled. “Yeah.”
MERCY had no idea Chase blamed Victor for his mother and vice versa. She didn’t even really know how Chase’s mother died. Not even a little. She had no idea how bad things were—because Chase hadn’t told her.
So five nights before Christmas Eve, when she was on the phone with one Mr. Victor Summers, Chase was not prepared to hear her end of the conversation.
“No, Mr. Summers, you listen to me. Chase is a great guy! We’ve got a home and a real nice place, and he works construction and goes to school. You’re not too good to come here and eat, you hear me?”
Suddenly she gasped and turned to Chase, her face bloodless and shocked.
“What’d he say?” Chase whispered fiercely, and Mercy just stood there, with her mouth open, gaping at him. Chase grabbed the phone from her and snarled into the phone.
“What in the fuck did you just say to her?”
“I told your little spic bitch to stay the hell away from me,” Chase’s dad snarled back into the phone. “I don’t want no fuckin’ beans and rice for Christmas dinner.”
Chase took a deep breath and stalked out of the living room and into the bathroom, slamming the door shut when he got there.
“Now listen here,” he growled, “you worthless sack of shit—”
“You can’t talk to me like that!” Victor whined, but Chase felt, deep in the seat of his balls, the horrible unfairness of it all. He could have been with Tommy. He could have been having Christmas with Tommy Halloran, with the big, dark eyes and that beautiful smile, but he wasn’t, because Mercy deserved better. And instead of getting better, she was putting herself in the way of Victor and his bullshit.
“I can talk to you whatever the fuck way I want,” Chase said, feeling a big pit of evil ugly open up from that anger in the seat of his balls. “I cosigned your last fucking lease, asshole, and if I pull that signature, you’re out on the fucking street. Now you will clean up, sober up, get your fucking ass over to my apartment for Christmas, and treat Mercy like a fucking queen, and if you screw this up, I will plant my shoe in your face and stomp the back of your head into the fucking concrete stairs before I call the cops and charge you with being a lousy excuse for a human being, do you fucking hear me?”
There was a snarl on the other end of the line, and Chase had a sudden thought that this was a bad idea. He should just have hung up; he shouldn’t have pushed this. His father was a bad man—there was just no two ways about it. There might have been something good in him once, and he might have been sort of a fucking human being when he’d met Chase’s mom, but not now. Not when Chase was a little kid, living
on ramen because that was the only thing Chase could cook. Not when Chase had been hysterical, rocking himself in the bathroom next to the cooling body of his mother while his father screamed, “Stop that fucking noise so I can call the goddamned cops!”
No. A good liar might have been able to find the final seeds of humanity in Victor Summers, but Chase was a jock, and he wasn’t that bright, and he flat-out didn’t….
“Tell her I’m sorry,” Victor said on the other line, and Chase almost dropped the phone.
“What?” he asked, so completely lost from the blazing red path his thoughts had followed that, for a minute, he couldn’t see past the scarlet in his vision.
“I was an asshole. Tell her I’m an asshole. Do you want me to bring anything?”
Your manners and a time machine, fuckhead.
“Rolls,” he said automatically. The absurdity of asking a raging alcoholic to bring wine was not something he was willing to tackle.
“You got some fucking balls there, you know that?” And weirdly enough it sounded like a compliment.
“You fuck this up and I’m not kidding about kicking you down the stairs headfirst,” Chase grunted. “Seriously. She’s too good a person to put up with your bullshit, even for a minute. God knows why she’s wasting her time on you.”
“Yeah, well, she likes you well enough. Must be—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Victor.”
“Whatever.” And then the phone disconnected, and Chase was left wondering if Mercy would accept that half-assed apology.
He’d just stood up to find out when his cell phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket to see Tommy smiling on the front. He rang in saying, “Hey, man, what’s up? Boston fucking cold enough for you?”